Experiments in Spaced Learning – Initial Impressions

Well today the sun shone down on me and I got a chance to experiment with ‘spaced learning‘ as planned.

photo credit: tamakisono

Initial gut instinct is that it was a success. Pupils were engaged in the entire process, made clear progress throughout the lesson and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. At this late stage in their school life that in itself is a good thing. Historically this class has been capable of forgetting or confusing the area and volume formula within a week of covering it last. So I’ll do some work with them next week and see if this has improved…

As I stated in my previous post, this is FAR from a scientific experiment. Doug asked in the comments how I would measure success and avoid the Hawthorne Effect. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t really considered this, it’s 3 weeks until the first GCSE and that’s my priority right now. I’m going to run with gut instinct with this one, and if things look successful I’ll try and organise a more detailed study later this year.

EDIT: I’m guilty of not leaving blog posts for a little while before clicking post – I get over excited! I should have included the following:

The PowerPoint presentation seemed to work well, it fitted the time perfectly, on the second run through I paused before revealing each formula and asked the class for the answer, upping the engagement a little. Final time we just whizzed through the table of formulae and then got to work on some GCSE past paper questions. These are being finished for homework, so that will be the first feedback. The proof will be in the exam next month though.